NTSB says faulty engineering led to implosion of Titan submersible

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Faulty engineering led to the implosion of an experimental submersible that killed five people on its way to the wreck of the Titanicthe National Transportation Safety Board concluded in a report Wednesday.

The NTSB made the statement in its final report on the hull rupture and implosion of the Titan submersible in June 2023. All people on board the submersible died instantly in the North Atlantic when Titan suffered an impact. catastrophic implosion as he descended towards the destroy.

The NTSB report states that the Titan’s faulty engineering “resulted in the construction of a carbon fiber composite pressure vessel that contained multiple anomalies and did not meet necessary strength and durability requirements.” He also said that OceanGate, the owner of the Titan, failed to adequately test the Titan and was unaware of its true durability.

The report also states that the Titan wreck likely would have been found sooner if OceanGate had followed standard emergency response guidelines, which would have saved “time and resources even if a rescue was not possible in this case.”

NTSB report agrees with Coast Guard report report published in August, describing Titan’s implosion as preventable. The Coast Guard has determined that safety procedures at Ocean Gatea private company based in Washington state, had “critical flaws” and found “glaring disparities” between security protocols and actual practices.

OceanGate suspended operations in July 2023 and closed its doors. A company spokesperson declined to comment Wednesday.

In August, after the Coast Guard report was released, a company spokesperson offered condolences to the families of those who died.

The Titan’s implosion killed Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, and led to lawsuits and calls for stricter regulation of private deep-sea expeditions. The implosion also killed French underwater explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, known as “Mr. Titanic”; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and her son Suleman Dawood.

The NTSB report recommends that the Coast Guard commission a panel of experts to study submersibles and other pressure vehicles intended for human occupancy. It also recommends that the Coast Guard implement regulations for vehicles that are informed by this study. The report said current regulations for small passenger vessels “allowed OceanGate to operate the Titan in an unsafe manner.”

The report also calls on the Coast Guard to “disseminate the study results to industry,” which has grown in recent years as privately funded exploration has grown.

The company was aware of the possibility of Coast Guard regulation before the implosion. In describing OceanGate’s corporate culture, the report cites an operations technician who left the company after expressing concerns about referring to paying passengers as “mission specialists.” The company’s CEO responded that “if the Coast Guard became a problem…he would buy himself a congressman and make him disappear,” the technician said, according to the report.

The ship had been making voyages to the Titanic site since 2021. Its final dive arrived on the morning of June 18, 2023. The submersible lost contact with her support ship approximately two hours later and was reported late in the afternoon. Ships, planes and equipment were rushed to the scene approximately 700 kilometers south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.

A multi-day search for survivors off the coast of Canada made international headlines. It soon became clear that there would be no survivors, and the coast guard and other authorities launched lengthy investigations into what had happened.

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.